Section 3
Measuring Public Opinion
By Boundless
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An opinion poll is a survey of public opinion from a particular sample, and is designed to represent the opinions of a population.
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The first known example of an opinion poll was an 1824 local straw poll by The Harrisburg Pennsylvanian for the Jackson Adams race.
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Gallup Inc. was founded in 1958, when George Gallup grouped all of his polling operations into one organization.
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The American National Election Studies (ANES) is the leading academically run national survey of voters in the United States.
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The main types of polls are: opinion, benchmark, bushfire, entrance, exit, deliberative opinion, tracking, and the straw poll.
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Steps to conduct a poll effectively including identifying a sample, evaluating poll questions, and selecting a question and response mode.
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A very important tool in data analysis is the margin of error because it indicates how closely the results of the survey reflect reality.
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Sampling is concerned with choosing a subset of individuals from a statistical population to estimate characteristics of a whole population.
Polling organization will lose credibility if they publish inaccurate results.
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Problems with polls typically stem either from issues with the methodology that bias the sample or the responses that cause the bias.
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Internet and telephone polls are very useful as they are much cheaper than most other polls and are able to reach a wide population.